Writer of Fancy: The Playful Piety of Jane Austen

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

The Baptized Body

1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary

The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature

Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism

A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel

Against Christianity

From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution

Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays

Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

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Film: Hooray for Hollywood

Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials (HDM) trilogy truly deserves all the epithets hurled at it, and Christians are gearing up for the December release of the film version of The Golden Compass, the first book in the trilogy.

We needn’t worry. Hollywood is working its magic.

Chris Weitz, the on-again, off-again, back-on-again writer and director, explained how the film will treat the book’s anti-Christianity in an online interview back in 2004: “New Line is a company that makes films for economic returns. . . . They have expressed worry about the possibility of HDM’s perceived antireligiosity making it an unviable project financially . . . Needless to say, all my best efforts will be directed towards keeping HDM as liberating and iconoclastic an experience as I can. But there may be some modification of terms.”

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Film: Scenic literalism

In his splendid performance history of Shakespeare, David Bevington frequently comments on the “scenic literalism” of film and television. Commenting on a TV production of As You Like It, he laments that the production “tells us where we are in the story by putting entire landscapes or interiors in front of our eyes even before the characters have said a word. We ‘read’ the scene first in terms of its visual setting. In this case, the attempt is misguided because it takes away the magic of an imagined landscape where all sorts of things can and do happen that would be absurd in an actual rural location.” Even Laurence Olivier is “unable to rescue [Paul Czinner’s 1936 film] from its saccharine premise that the play is a good old-fashioned love story set in a picturesque countryside.”

Film: Darcy and Elizabeth

Ellen Belton points out that in the 1995 BBC production of Pride and Prejudice, “Elizabeth and Darcy (Colin Firth) are hardly ever frames together until well into the second half of the film, and when they are shown in the same shot, the effect is to emphasize the obstacles between them. In the private interview at Hunsford that precedes the first proposal scene, Elizabeth and Darcy rarely look directly at one another. In the one shot in which both their faces are seen, Elizabeth is seated on the left, Darcy on the right, each framed against a different window and each looking toward the camera. A fall cabinet/writing desk between the windows in the background dominates the center of the shot. In the proposal scene itself, Elizabeth and Darcy’s faces are never seen in the same frame until Elizabeth rises to hasten Darcy’s departure.” Yet, from the beginning the film anticipates their eventual union by a progression from “sidelong glances to direct contemplation to mutual admiration.”

Film: Gambling

In his history of American movies (thanks again Ken Myers), David Thomson notes that “there was in the ordinary lifestile of the first moguls a steady habit of gambling.” David Selznick, he says, “lost a couple of million dollars in two years.”

No wonder: Their whole industry is a form of gambling: “Making a movie is not a wise, judicious use of money. . . . But to make a movie puts on in line, notionally, for a very big hit. Increasingly in the history of movis . . . the ethos of the stand-out super-hit has taken over from a policy of steady business. That in itself is a mark of how unbusinesslike the business is.”

To illustrate, he describes the process of funding for The Ten Commandments:

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Film: Really Lost

Last year, we got the first season of Lost on DVD and were instantly hooked. These guys sure know how to hold an audience. But for me the hold is weakening as we begin watching the second seson, as it becomes increasingly clear that all these people escaped from a Sidney psyche ward.

Flight 815 was a ship of fools.

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Film: The Island

In many ways, The Island is a silly movie: Long, repetitive, boring chase scenes, inexplicable explosions, impossible escapes, gaping holes in the plot, all filmed with MTV quick-cuts and apparently lit with strobe lights. Somewhere on the far side of the silliness, however, is a welcome indictment of the dehumanization and outright murder involved in genetic manipulation, cloning, and other biotechnologies.

Remarkably, the film hits a number of key prolife themes. The connection between slavery and bioethics is hammered from various directions: Ewan McGregor plays the clone of Tom Lincoln, the Moses-Christ figure who harrows hell and emancipates the clones at the close of the movie (but to where?? there is no promised land), and Djimon Hounsou is Albert Laurent, an African head of a private security agency who comes to see his own experience mirrored in that of the clones.

The cloning operation is presented as idolatrous hubris. In one of the few overtly religious references in the movie, the villainous Dr. Merrick (Sean Bean) is defending himself to Laurent. “When did killing become a business for you?” Laurent asks, to which Merrick answers “I don’t kill. I give life. I can cure childhood leukemia. How many people can say that?” “Only you and God,” Laurent answers. “That’s the answer you were looking for, wasn’t it?”

Yes, that’s exactly the answer.

Film: Sky High

Sky High focuses on Will Stronghold, son of the greatest superhero duo in history - The Commander and Jetstream, who has some difficulty (but not nearly enough) discovering his powers. Though as much a high school story as a superhero story, Sky High will inevitably be compared with The Incredibles, and will suffer by the comparison. The cartoon has a vastly better script, is much more inventive, and is a sustained assault on egalitarianism. Sky High is of two minds about the superiority of the super. The filmmakers can’t decide whether to mock egalitarianism or promote it, and end up doing both: The Green superheroine Layla’s distrust of “labeling” is played for laughs, yet the film as a whole dismantles the hierarchy of superhero and sidekick. The movie has its amusing moments, but Mr. Incredible is my preferred hero any day.

Film: Constantine

Keanu Reeves seems incapable of playing anything but a Christ figure (remember his supersonic ascension at the end of Matrix 1). In the recent horror film, Constantine, he plays John Constantine (J.C. – get it?), an agnostic, chain-smoking suicide restored to life to work as a free-lance exorcist. He hopes to earn a place in heaven, so that he can escape the unpleasant prospect of spending eternity in a hell populated by demons he sent there through his work as an exorcist. The film deploys Christian symbols, but the world of the film is more Manichean than Christian.

At the heart of the story is the angel Gabriel’s plot to carry out an alternative plan for humanity’s redemption. Unhappy that God so readily saves people who confess and believe, she (yes, it’s Gabriela) embarks on a strategy of making humanity worthy of God’s love, a strategy that involves a sword of destiny and a psychic policewoman who will be used as the “doorway” through which Mammon, Satan’s son, will be born into the world. As humanity faces the horrors Mammon will unleash, it will display a respectable degree of courage and perseverance and be worthy of God.

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Film: The Pianist and the Nazis

In a 2003 TNR review of Roman Polanski’s Oscar-winning film, The Pianist, Michael Oren gives information about Wilm Hosenfeld, the German officer who assists Szpilman:

“while scrounging in an abandoned house for food, Szpilman comes face-to-face with a German officer. Instead of drawing his revolver, the officer asks Szpilman what he does for a living, and then leads him to a piano. Stiff and unpracticed, Szpilman manages to perform Chopin’s Nocturne in C-Sharp Minor, whereupon the officer steeves him in an attic directly above the German headquarters and feeds him. . . .

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Film: Bride and Prejudice

This 2004 Indian musical version of the Austen novel is energetic, colorful, distracting fun. At several points, it departs from Austen’s novel. Darcy’s proposal does not come out of the blue, but at the end of a series of dates (including a helicopter ride over LA and a sunset walk on the beach, accompanied by a very large robed church choir). Darcy doesn’t secretly take care of the Wickham-Lydia affair, but chases Wickham down in a theater, where they slug it out in front of the film audience. There is no Lady Catherine; Darcy’s mother stands in, and doesn’t appear enough to be much of a threat to the romance. And the pace and balance of the story is all wrong; Darcy does not propose until we are an hour and a half into the film, and things have to wrap up in twenty minutes.

I don’t object to these departures because I’m an Austen purist. I object because none of the departures from the original improved the story; in every instance, the changes weakened the original. I’ve always enjoyed Austen’s controlled, crystalline prose, her psychological insight, her wicked humor. But I came away from Bride and Prejudice with a deeper appreciation of Austen’s skill in plotting (which is not considered her strongest suit).

Film: Hamann’s hermeneutic

Hamann allegorized a hermeneutical principle of Jer 38: “We all find ourselves in such a swampy prison as the one in which Jeremiah found himself. Old rags served as ropes to pull him out; to them he owed his gratitude for saving him. Not their appearance, but the services they provided him and the use he made of them, redeemed his life from danger”

He also finds a hermeneutical principle in the story of David’s madness: “Who can read the story of David without a trembling of reverent fear . . . [the story of one] who distorted his gestures, played like a fool, painted the doors of the gate, [and] slobbered on his beard, without hearing in the judgment of Achish an echo of the thinking of an unbelieving joker and sophist of our time.”

Film: Jean de Florette

Some thoughts on Claude Berri’s beautiful and provocative 1986/1987 films Jean de Florette and Manon of the Springs.

1. The story is a reverse Oedipus tale, focusing on how Cesar Soubeyran(Yves Montand) ruins and kills his own son (Jean, played by Girard Depardieu) without knowing it is his son. The Oedipus allusions are made fairly explicit. A blind woman tells him that the hunchback is his son, and the preacher at the church service refers to the Oedipus myth, comparing the loss of water in the village to the plague of Thebes and calling the sinner responsible to confess it.

2. There are important Girardian elements. Jean is an outsider, treated with contempt because he is not from the village and because he is a hunchback. Manon (Ernestine Mazurowna) is an outsider throughout the second film, living in the hills and watching her goats. Yet she is not considered a curse but a blessing; everyone wants her to pray for water. As Girard says, the scapegoat ends up being the savior, and thus treated as “semi-divine.” People pray to the now-dead Jean several times in the second film. At the end Manon is married to the teacher (another outsider) but they become integrated into the village.

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Film: The Village

I finally watched The Village. Much of it was perfectly silly. The initial explanation of the dead animals littering the village is that a coyote is on the loose, and this theory is put to rest only when it’s decided that coyotes are not big enough to leave big red marks on doors. They need medicine from “the towns” - why not send the blind girl through the woods? The stilted language and inverted syntax got irritating, and whoever told William Hurt he could act needs another line of work. How a whole village of apparently normal and normally intelligent people could fall, automaton-like, for the hoax perpetrated on them is hard to fathom.

But there were things to like: M. Night Shyamalan’s movies are always lovely to look at, and his camera is good at creating and maintaining tension. Plus, I suspect that some of what I found silly was intended allegorically (blind girl in the woods, led by love not sight) or as clues to the real origins of the villagers (the doctor appears to be Indian - from the moment he appeared I wondered how he got into the film, chasing out the thought that he was fulfilling a quota; and how’d the doctor know about alternatives to the primitive medicine he practiced in the village?; the women lead the town meetings). And the “surprise” ending that illuminates the whole and makes you rethink what you’ve been watching is well-done.

The most interesting aspects of the film for me, however, had to do with its “literary” structure and its sociology. Shyamalan does his audiences the courtesy of not explaining every detail. There is a whole back-story that he feels no need to explain through intrusive flashbacks or other clumsy narrative devices. A few clippings and photos in a locked box, with a few brief lines in voice-over are enough to hint at a background, and leave it tantalizingly undeveloped. The film ends abruptly in some respects, but any “six months later” epilogue with bright skies, a healthy Lucius, and a married Ivy would have reduced the film considerably. Contemporary film is often deadening precisely because it tells all, shows all, and leaves nothing for us to mull over afterward; Shyamalan’s movies inspire post-game conversation.

I am not certain of the direct target (if there was one) of the sociological parable, but as a general parable about anti-modernism it raises some important issues. There is the overarching irony that a community retreats from the terrors of modern life and can maintain its identity only by creating new terrors. There is a dramatic critique of the utopian impulse, a critique that, intriguingly, ends not with cynicism but with what might be taken as a chastened, realistic utopianism: The village is no longer innocent, but it is still, in the eyes of the elders at least, worth staying. Yet, the critique of the utopian impulse cuts deeper. The village has a future only because of its contact with “the towns,” but there is no indication that the elders plan to nurture Ivy’s initial contact. In the end, however, the villagers opt for a communal life based on lies, exclusions, and fear. Shyamalan apparently wants to ask, Is any other form of antimodernism available?

Film: Incredibles

I’m not the first one to notice, by any means, but let me chime in: The Incredibles is an overt attack on egalitarianism. All the bad guys in the movie want to flatten out the differences between “supers” and everyone else - the litigious people who are injured during rescues, Bob Par’s (!) boss at the insurance company who sees everyone as an interchangeable cog in a corporate machine, the big bad guy Syndrome who wants to release the secrets of his “superpowers” so that “everyone can be super.” Little things reinforce the theme, as when Bob goes into his rant about Dash’s “graduation” from fourth to fifth grade.

Some of my favorite moments: When Dash realizes he’s running across water, and lets out a giggle of pure delight; when JackJack the baby turns into a demon when he’s being kidnapped by Syndrome; the Incredibles coming to the rescue in an RV. The movie is lots of fun, and almost all of it is at the expense of all the right people.

Film: Tarantino

New York Press critic Armond White has offered the most incisive summary of Tarantino’s work and influence: “QT made sadism hip and sent it ’round the world.”

In another piece on Tarantino, White points (less convincingly, but still interestingly) to “QT’s” play with race: “Tarantino is the first white filmmaker to forge a career based on disreputable, underclass taste ?Ethe movie culture that black urban youth were raised on and affectionately viewed as their own. Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill owe their inspiration to ’70s blaxploitation movies ?Ea Hollywood trend that catered to the domestic fragmentation that occurred in America after ’60s political dissent, responding specifically to the social conflagrations of riots and rebellions that shifted the tax base and demographic make up of most U.S. cities. (Abandoned urban movie houses were blighted, left to feature the kind of trash-product that had been the traditional fare of drive-ins.) Blaxploitation anticipated a lasting cultural fragmentation. The pop audience that the ’60s seemed to unite became newly segregated into distinct racial and generational enclaves. The young folk who grew up on blaxploitation (and who would innovate hip hop culture) withdrew into disaffected sub-cults ?Eclaiming grade Z action movies, even the cheaply made and hastily dubbed kung-fu imports, as aesthetic ideals divorced of any social or ideological thinking.

“Young, white Tarantino witnessed and participated in these changes. As a new era’s hipster, Tarantino embarked upon a different kind of white flight. He gravitated toward sleazy black pop but without acquiring any political identification. He could reject the traditional, bourgeois film content and claim a timely, original approach: His films emphasized the pleasure of pop without moral conscience, yet were rife with racially tinged violence. Blaxploitation was thereby reborn as something postmodern ?Ea white-identified entertainment form that took lack of social progress for granted and celebrated the post-80s tenets of greed and narcissism.”

Film: The Passion Once More

Tom Aitken reviews The Passion of the Christ in the March 26 issue of the London Times Literary Supplement, and says everything I would want to say about the weaknesses of the film, and more. Aitken goes off track a few times when he talks about the gospels themselves, but overall the review is far and away the best I have seen.

Film: The Passion, Yet Again

Here are some slightly repetitive notes for a short talk I gave on The Passion on Friday, March 26.

INTRODUCTION
I want to discuss a single scene of The Passion, which will lead into both commendation for its strengths and criticisms of some of its weaknesses. The scene is the first scene in the Garden of Gethsemane.

POSITIVES
This scene goes beyond the biblical evidence in a couple of ways. First, Jesus is not only praying to His Father about His upcoming death, but is also being tempted by the devil, a pale androgyne dressed in a hooded black robe. Second, at the end of the scene, as Jesus gets up from prayer, he steps on a snake that the devil had released against Him. (The snake first appears as a small worm going in and out of the devil?s nostrils; my first thought was, ?ES)he needs to get that looked at.?E

In the gospels, of course, neither of these things actually happens. Despite that, I believe they are effective, and not merely for cinematic reasons. They are interesting theological and typological insights. The scene is obviously replete with echoes of Genesis 3: Jesus is, after all, the New Adam, praying in a Garden as He enters into combat with the serpent, whose head He has come to crush. Though not directly in the text of the gospels, then, these images capture an important part of the meaning of the gospel narratives; the evangelists INTEND that we think of Eden when Jesus goes to pray in the garden. And, it is clear that Jesus is being tempted and tested in the garden; Luke uses an athletic term (AGON) to describe Jesus as He struggles in prayer. Jesus?Evictory in this garden reverses Adam?s defeat in Eden, just as Jesus?Edeath on the tree saves the children of Adam, who brought death through a tree.

Throughout The Passion, Gibson?s additions to the gospels were often felicitous. Some of these additions were typological. During one portion of the via dolorosa scene, Mary is walking along one side of the road while the devil walks along the other side, holding what appears to be a child. When we see the child?s face, it?s an ugly dwarf of some sort, showing that the pair to be a ghastly parody of the Madonna and child. Other additions offered insight into the psychological or theological dimensions of the story. The portrayal of the Roman torturers and of the scourging of Jesus goes far beyond the brief statements of the gospels, but captured the contempt that the Romans had for Jews. Gibson alternated scenes of the Last Supper with scenes of the crucifixion, linking especially the elevation of the ?host?Ewith the erection of the cross. This has certain Roman Catholic resonances, but it is a perfectly valid biblical insight, for Jesus?Emain explanation of His death occurred at the Last Supper. The juxtaposition of scenes with the disciples and the crucifixion also gave a certain nuance to Jesus?Estatement that His blood is shed ?for you.?E It felt as if Jesus were promising to give His life specifically for the disciples. Though the text is properly taken in a broader sense, surely this is one part of what Jesus meant: He laid down His life for His friends, and the disciples were His friends. Barabbas?Ecrude joy at his unanticipated release was perfect, as was the high priest?s contemptuous dismissal.

Thus, oddly enough, Gibson often offered the most insight into the gospels when he went beyond the gospels.

NEGATIVES
Still, as I have written before, making Gethsemane the opening scene of the film was also, in my mind, an artistic mistake, one that attenuates the thickness of the gospel. As I have preached through Luke?s gospel over the past several months, it has become more and more striking to me how little the gospels include of traditional ?atonement theology.?E This is not to say that this atonement theology is wrong. Paul and the other epistle writers of the NT make it clear that Jesus?Edeath is a substitutionary and propitiatory sacrifice, and even in the gospels there are allusions to the Suffering Servant that highlight a substitutionary idea of the atonement.

Yet, the story-line of the gospels themselves and the story-line of atonement theology are different. Atonement theology in its patristic, medieval, and Reformation forms, begins with the sin of Adam, whereby Adam came under the threat of death, perhaps runs briefly through the OT, and then skips to the death of Jesus as the substitute for the sinful race of Adam. That story-line is biblical, and is certainly one of the frameworks for Paul?s theology (the Adam-Christ parallels of Romans 5, for instance). But the gospel narratives are much more particular; the death of Jesus is one of the climactic scenes in a story whose main points are Jesus?Ebirth and baptism, His temptation in the wilderness, His ministry of teaching and healing, the growing hostility of the Jewish leaders to Jesus and His work, Jesus?Ejourney to Jerusalem for Passover, His provocative action in the temple, and His subsequent arrest.

Gibson?s film puts the Passion squarely in the narrative of traditional atonement theology, but makes little effort to show how the Passion fits into the narrative of the gospels themselves. Had the film begun with Jesus tossing the money changers out of the temple, or included a flashback to one of Jesus?Econflicts with the Jewish leaders, this crucial dimension of the Passion might have been clarified. As it was, within the film itself, it was not at all clear why the Jews wanted to kill Him, or what kind of threat He posed to the Jewish leadership. Had Gibson included some of these scenes from the gospels, he would have made not only a more theologically rich film, but a more interesting one.

Film: The Passion, Again

I’ve read some surprising things in The New Republic: Andrew Sullivan’s analysis of the Roman Catholic Church several years ago was very insightful, and Eugene Genovese, reviewing a book on Southern slavery, encouraged TNR’s readers to check out the works of James Henley Thornwell. But I’ve never read so many Bible quotations in TNR as I did this week, in several articles on The Passion.

Film: The Passion

N.T. Wright has spoiled me. He has given such vivid portrayals of Jesus that I had difficulty getting into and appreciating Gibson’s The Passion. The film seemed so context-free that it’s hard for me to see how anyone could make much sense of it without already knowing who’s who and what’s what. Here are some of my complaints about the movie:

1) I think starting the film in Gethsemane was a big problem. You have no idea who Jesus’ enemies are, or why they are His enemies. If you wanted to start in Holy Week, why not with the triumphal entry, the provocative action in the temple, and the debates that ensue. Gibson’s Jesus is not a crucifiable Jesus.

2) This non-crucifiability was reinforced by the flashback scenes, which to me were the worst scenes in the film. There were some nice touches here and there, but overall the teaching and Last Supper scenes could have been filmed in the 1950s. There was a holy hush over all the scenes; they could have come from some 19th-century liberal. Why would anyone want to kill Jesus, who’s just preaching love and kindness to everybody? The one scene that stretched beyond the pious stereotype was the one with Jesus building a table, but that was so corny that it didn’t work. There was little or nothing of Wright’s shrewd, passionate, festive Jesus in the film; there was little of Jesus the “folk hero” who constantly outwits the Jewish leaders. And the excuse that the film was about the last week of Jesus’ life doesn’t wash; the flashback scenes could have shown a more interesting and biblical Jesus, but the film goes with the Jesus of modern piety.

3) Oddly, one complaint is that Gibson adhered too closely to the text of the NT. Of course, he had some legendary scenes, but overall he stuck very close to the text. That made for a poorer movie, since the text doesn’t give (and isn’t designed to give) a cinematic picture of Jesus’ life. Making the text work as a movie requires going beyond the text. The places where Gibson did this (eg, the Roman torturers) are not only very effective as film, but also actually give insight into the text.

4) I found the resurrection scene very weak. I have seen many, many “resurrection” scenes in film that were more powerful. The “resurrection” of Hero at the end of Much Ado and the “resurrection” of Sebastian and Viola at the end of Twelfth Night are both more moving scenes than the resurrection in Gibson’s film. The problem, I think, was that the film stopped before Jesus actually encountered anyone. What makes the resurrection scenes in other films work is the unexpected wonder of the dead coming to life. No one on the screen was given a chance to express that wonder. The garden scene with Mary Magdalene would have been effective, a scene with Peter at the sea (who just drops out of the film after denying Jesus), the road to Emmaus ?Eany of these would have been more effective.

5) Pilate’s dilemma is described by Pilate himself, but I would have liked it better if Pilate’s dilemma had been shown. We just have to take Pilate’s word for it that the Jews are difficult to rule. We don’t see much of that in action (though we see a bit). Some effort to set the political situation would have appealed to me.

6) One quibble: The effects of the earthquake on the temple moved too quickly for me to tell for sure, but I wondered where the priests were standing as they surveyed the damage? Was that supposed to be the temple?

In the end, I suppose I’m complaining that Gibson didn’t read Jesus and the Victory of God or consult with N.T. Wright while making the film.

Film: Movies, Stories, and Redemption

“Movies,” writes Brian Godawa, a Christian screenwriter, “may be about story, but those stories are finally, centrally, crucially, primarily MOSTLY about redemption.” Godawa uses the theologically loaded term “redemption” intentionally, but he recognizes that many contemporary movies present a distinctly secular gospel of redemption. For some movies, redemption comes through making individual decisions that flaut social and religion conventions or morality. For others, redemption is no more than learning to live with dignity in an absurd and chaotic world. Godawa’s book focuses mainly on how exitentialist and postmodern worldviews are manifested in contemporary films, and also how religion, especially Christianity, is presented. He includes an appendix that helpfully explores legitimate uses of sex and violence in film. Though most of Godawa’s discussions of individual films are brief, they are frequently illuminating and the book as a whole provides an excellent introduction for Christian evaluation of movies. The book left me wishing for more, and fortunately, Godawa’s work is available on the web at www.godawa.com.

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